Greening the ghetto, Rio style

Majora Carter’s story of how she helped transform a South Bronx landfill into a park while raising awareness about environmental problems is one of the most inspiring of any in the green movement. Her Greening the Ghetto motto gets to the heart of one of the environmental movement’s biggest challenges – escaping the stigma that it’s an affectation of liberal yuppies and demonstrating that environmental injustice is at the core of poverty.

My plug for When a Billion Chinese Jump

This might seem a bit out of my patch, but I have to make a plug for When a Billion Chinese Jump – simply because what happens in China has such an enormous impact on the world. The Guardian’s Asia Environment Correspondent Jonathan Watts drove to the remotest corners of China to visit coal miners, conservation biologists, hydropower projects, and nature reserves while providing unparalleled insight into what China’s rise means for the fate of human existence on the planet.